Cambrian Explosion: mutation rate (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 02:41 (4064 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Because cells communicate individually, just as bacteria do and ants do. That's why the parallel is so fascinating! -How do these early primative cells commmunicate? Chemically and reacting to chemical stimuli. Even now that is the way it works.-> dhw;Ants can change roles, while within the same community you will also find different forms of the same species, and since we know innovations happen, obviously cells can do the same. -Perhaps obvious to you, not me. Cells do not think, as noted above. Ants are whole organisms reacting to instincts.-> dhe:The coding only becomes binding when an innovation works and the cells adopt their respective roles. There have to be the two stages: 1) innovation, 2) perpetuation, always in accordance with the prevailing environment.-Do the cells hold a meeting and decide which ones are solid in their roles and which ones are not? Remember I told you a kidney has probably 20-30 different cell types with different functions. I have no idea how they individually decided to adapt their DNA to differing expressions to become each type. And those types must coordinate their functions so the kidney actually works. The glomeruli act as filters and the urine-to-be travels over a very large distance (microscopically) throught the Loops of Henley, where the concentrations of various chemicals and salts are graded out to the right concentration for the blood and separately for the urine, all done by chemical reaction. No thought!-> dhw: Ant colonies must have developed their different engineering works, military strategies, farming techniques etc. from scratch, and each invention required new roles. Ditto the formation of new organs by the cells. I simply do not believe that innovation can be the product of instinct. (That is why your foal is irrelevant.)-Unless planned from the beginning. How did instincts develop in trilobites? I should have brought that up in the book. We have de novo forms. Did they arrive instincts intact? And my foal is very relavent. At bith he sees his mother loves me. What is his problem that he runs from me automatically?-
> dhw: Is there anything in my proposal that is contradicted by the following passage from Erwin and Valentin on the website you refer to?-
> 
> "Increased genetic and developmental interactions were also critical to the formation of new animal body plans. By the time a branch of advanced sponges gave rise to more complex animals, their genomes comprised genes whose products could interact with regulatory elements in a coordinated network. Network interactions were critical to the spatial and temporal patterning of gene expression, to the formation of new cell types, and to the generation of a hierarchical morphology of tissues and organs. The evolving lineages could begin to adapt to different regions within the rich mosaic of conditions they encountered across the environmental landscape, diverging and specializing to diversify into an array of body forms."-It depends upon the interpretation of their suppositions. I view their description as allowing for information in the DNA which drove the changes they assume happened. It all depends upon where and how the information in the DNA came from. You don't like chance and I strongly object to chance, so then what? I choose an information maker who planned for an evolutionary process that was coded for increasing complexity. You want the cells to hold a convention and make decisions. Poppy cock! There is too much biological complexity in advanced animals of the Cambrian to imagine your way is correct. That is why Darwin was so frightened of the Silurian as he called it. And why current Darwinist papers are scrambling around trying to confuse the iissue.